


"Let me tell you the tales of High Adventure"

by TheLightdancer



Series: Dagor Dagorath [6]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Other, Sword and Sorcery and Elves Oh My
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:42:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28846989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: Elladan and Elrohir tell their mother and their grandmother of some of the adventures they had during the twenty year quest for Arwen.
Relationships: Elladan/Niënor Níniel
Series: Dagor Dagorath [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1979809
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	"Let me tell you the tales of High Adventure"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ilya_Boltagon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilya_Boltagon/gifts).



_A clearing near the House of Last Resort:_

For Celebrían it was still somewhat awkward to face the reality that in the span since the Balrog of Moria had led an army to sack Rivendell and brought about its fall, that her sons had grown and grown much. They had spent that time in a quest that had seen them depart in rage with harsh words. In retrospect, learning that Arwen had been _seen_ by them behind the Balrog and that they had literally been dragged away trying to save her meant that there was much guilt beneath the surface. At another level, sitting beside her mother, who had her arms folded and a Ring that shone in the Sun. She had asked her what the nature of the Ring was and how it came to be on her finger, but her mother had simply set her jaw and said nothing. 

Sometimes Celebrían envied that her family had seen so much and fought in so much. Her husband had fought at the Dagorlad in the War of the Last Alliance and had seen the War of Wrath, when the Star-Kindler's great handmaiden had descended from the skies and quite literally burned away the taint of the fell power of the North, leveling Beleriand in the process. That story still made her shiver with a delicious kind of fear, the thought of Eönwë and Ilmarë leading armies in the greatest war that would be fought....she paused, until the one looming _was_ fought. Her mother had endured the Kinslayings, two of them, things that led to her screaming in the dead of night at times with dreams of which she said little. There were names, sometimes, and there was little said of why those names, of what lay behind them. That was her main indication that war was not glorious, that the deeds of Tinuviel and Erchamion in going before the very throne of Morgoth, and of her father and of Isildur and Elendil, last sons of fallen Westernesse were more than was shown.

Still she wanted to do more than be told of bold deeds done by others. In her life what she had done was to be married, happily so, and to have four children. And of them, one was a baby, two had had grand adventures, and the fourth had _literally banished the Vala of the Outer Dark himself to his throne._ To be merely insecure that her life was that of marriage and family and hiding was, in Celebrían's admittedly biased view quite a bit of success, for she had had so very much to live through with others, but not with herself. Her mother looked at her as these thoughts whirled in her mind, and there was a faint smile on her face that she missed, not that she would have seen it nor intepreted it rightly. Nor the way there was a not so subtle element of pain in her mother's gaze as memories were called up and clouded things for a moment.

_"Mae Govannen, Nana, Darneaeth."_

She smiled with a bit of a distracted element at seeing her sons. Each of them had blades in scabbards at their side, worn much more casually. She cocked her head, as Galadriel's eyes widened slightly and then she had a surprisingly approving smile. Elladan and Elrohir grinned, Elladan smiling at the thought of the kiss he'd recently gotten from Nienor, as Elrohir snorted. 

"Still thinking about your pretty maiden, eh brother?" Elladan glared at him and Elrohir had an innocent expression on his face that led the two to burst out into laughter as their grandmother smiled.

"How is Nienor?"

'She's been doing much better, _Darneath_. Arwen has, I think, helped her with an old sorrow that was lifted from her. She's been....happier, you could say. More affectionate." 

Galadriel inclined her head slightly with a smile.

"Should we prepare for a wedding?"

Elladan snorted and couldn't resist.

As he did so, he moved his right arm and then there was the glimpse of a very deep scar, like a puncture mark in his arm.

Celebrían gasped. "How'd that happen?" 

"What?" Elladan stared blankly for a moment. "What, this?"

She nodded.

"Oh, my brother and I got that in the first year of our Quest for our missing sister."

"W-What kind of creature could do that?"

"Well...."

_"You know brother, I thought that Curunir was mad, but this?"_

_"Mordor is empty, brother, no more devils there. Its lord is gone and only the thing in the north lurks and waits."_

_Elrohir's nose twitched._

_"So remind me again why are we looking for our sister here?"_

_They were walking near what had been the pass of Minas Morgul, back in the previous era, and still oozed fell slimes and traces of the old works of Gorthaur._

_"We're not looking for her, here."  
_

_He sighed._

_"You remember that creature, that Gollum?"_

_Elrohir nodded._

_"He escaped from here and he spoke of something...."_

_They froze. It was noon, and even in a place where the taints and evils of Sauron brought great and terrible shadows that interwove within the very material fabric of existence, providing darkness where darkness ought not be, there was a strangeness here. Sauron's darkness did not change light or shadows, it intensified them and it brought with them an element of Fear, the primordial horror that lurks at the core of all life, a legacy among many of the Marring. This....this **drank** light like one of the spawn of Thuringwethil. _

Galadriel paled and stirred slightly.

_"So let me get this straight, we found a lesser monster, now we're here deliberately looking for a greater one?"_

_Elladan nodded. "We are."_

_"Why? What possible sense is there in this?"_

_"If I wanted to hide someone who was the mirror image of our ancestor, where would I do so?"_

_'Ah. So we're not looking for her, at the one hand, but we are hoping to find something, anything of her in the other."_

_They nodded._

_"Well, this sure makes me feel better," grumbled Elrohir, as he kicked a dried and decayed skull that had clearly been an Orc._

_"We're trying to find our sister or a trace of our sister in a monster's-"_

_A mental pulse from his brother and he silenced his words immediately, and both drew their blades._

_No gleam, so there were Orcs here, not living ones, in any event._

**_Elf-flesh,_** _a voice purred. **A delicacy I have not feasted upon since the Great Scattering, when my mother fell in the light of the Star-Kindler's witch's ransacking of her realm . What fools these Deathless be.**_

_The Elves raised their blades._

**_Your little pig-stickers won't help you, spawns of...._ **

_A sniffing sound.  
_

**_Oooh,_** _the voice purred. **Not merely Elves, but the lineage of the half-breed. Of Melian, the little traitor to the design who had congress with a child of Illuvatar and debased herself.**_

_It moved now and they caught a glimpse of something immense and vast and monstrous, eight-legged, its motions skittering.  
_

_The darkness drank in its presence and it was the darkness, and it lunged forward and Elladan shouted in pain, the creature puncturing his flesh. He stood, woozily, blood dripping down his arm, staggering and then he slumpled, bonelessly._

_"Beast!"_

**_I am so much more than a beast, little Elf, so much more._ **

_It skittered into full view then and he caught only a glimpse of something colossal. Arwen in her dog-like state could appear, if so she wished, a vast and hulking thing of slavering fangs and gleaming eyes, shadow made manifest, scars coating its head. Two of the eyes were dead, one a cratered and sunken thing, the other milky save a great streak across it. It was not in truth a spider, for it had great horns on either side of its head, horns with something of the shape of a ram, and it moved in a manner that seemed to crack reality around it. Only a glimpse, and then on impulse, he drew Arwen's old pendant, surprised to see that it cast out brighter lights,  
_

Elrohir shivered. Many things had they seen in that time, but only this truly gave him the kind of nightmares to match whatever his grandmother had experienced in the Kinslayings and the Helcaraxe. 

_It jerked and reality jerked with it, and it lunged at him, and in a single desperate stroke he hurled his blade Orcrist straight at its heart, and the creature impaled itself on the blade and then wailed like a damned soul. For a moment within time he remembered the stories of Luthien, and the things that Arwen and Dior were said to be able to do, and he let himself call upon his ancestries, those of the Maiar more than the rest. His eyes turned into pools of darkness, the mirror of Melian's when she called upon her nature and the power surged through the blade, and the wailing of the creature (_ unknown to them recuperating from yet another bid by Morgoth's minions to kill it, and yet.....) _the power scythed through it._

_It staggered off, wailing, and they did not encounter it again._

_He remained kneeling by Elladan, waiting for the venom to pass, and when his brother awoke the first thing he croaked was "You were right. This was a dumb idea."_

_And with that, they managed to leave.  
_

Galadriel's eyes were wide, but her nod no less approving. '"You did well to face the last living child of Ungoliant and live." 

"I wish we'd killed her."

Galadriel's shrug was artful. "I am merely grateful you are here to tell the tale."

Celebrían stared in mute open-mouthed shock. 

"That's just one of the different kinds of tales we can tell."

She looked at them shyly.

"Do you have any that are less.......demonic?"

Elrohir nodded, though he grimaced slightly.

"These are stories of adventures and clashes with the enemy, Nana, there are no peaceful tales with such things."

Celebrían merely shrugged. "I still want to hear them." 

Elladan cocked his head and Elrohir took a deeper breath.

_Ugluk panted, hiding near a tree. Two Elves, of a very strange sort, had come upon him and his troop. They were among the bold and the esteemed, those who had brought the Dark Lord to his new consort. These creatures had Biter and Beater, two of the most fearsome legacies of the old Wars of Gondolin, shadowy and half-understood, much moreso than the War of the Dwarves and the Orcs. They were Elves, of a sort, but not in the sense that the more traditional Elves they had fought were. They gleamed in eldritch fashion, especially in the dead of night._

_Ugluk sighed. "Why me? What have I done to be stuck in this shit?"  
_

_He missed no-one in his band, for they were all worthless anyway, much as he was. Nothing reshaped at the very soul was worth that much, especially when the Dark Lord had done it. Two blue glows at night, the Moon's silvery hue making this a run of futility, but such was life._

_Ugluk looked upward._

_"Ugluk is only a pawn in the game of life."_

_He breathed on his hands, carefully, and sought to spring and make a run for it when he saw one of the two entities chasing him. Men might have seen two Elves more human-like than not, with softer points to the ear, grief carving lines into their faces._

_Two blades that glowed like a fearsome pair of torches. One on his right, one on his left._

_"You attacked our home," spoke one of the beings, in a voice of thunder and doom. His eyes seemed to shine and reflect that of the Moon. the others' likewise._

_"Elf filth," snarled Ugluk. "Your kind lived in the light of the False Gods of the West. We had only the dark. Our master made us monsters. You lived in luxury and refinement. Why then would we not wage war against such softness? No kindly Valar to save us, only the Lord of the Darkness and his little servant who remade us into these things. Go to Hell, and may my lord's hands resh-"_

_Two blades lanced out and in pain and stabbing nature there was silence, his head gazing at his body that sunk with a blade in its heart._

_A curse was forever locked in silent lips as the sight faded, eyes staring open._

_They wiped the blades on cloths and sheathed them in their scabbards._

_"One down. A few....hundred to go."_

It was then that Galadriel pointed to the blades. 

"I know those weapons. Forged by Turgon's smiths, in Gondolin of old. I have heard of them, though I have not seen them."

They nodded.

"Where did you find them?"

_"Go poke the spider's lair, you said. Go poke the nasty little things in Moria, you said. But this?"_

_Elrohir glared at Elladan as they ran, dodging the hulking creatures that moved and roared and threw objects and seemingly themselves at each other._

_"I hate giants," growled Elladan._

_" 'Dan, I appreciate the criticism, I really do, but could you save it for a time where we're not likely to be crushed by warring giants that can't see us?"_

_"Whose fault is that again, 'Rohir?"_

_Elrohir sighed, histronically, as the two continued to seek one of the more fearsome Goblin-holds in the Misty Mountains._

_"Are we just going around stirring up Hornet's Nests?"_

_"No, brother. You had that dream too."_

_They nodded. A dream. Of all things. They were searching further north and then a dream of a cave and two swords, and a hulking bloated thing that was a lesser Maia in Orc-form. A thing that needed to die, that would be vulnerable._

_Had they seen the thing climbing the mountain behind them, trying to escape the stone giants and to find his way to keep evading the really nasty things that were crawling out of the woodwork, they would have been fascinated at how the modified variants of felinioid claws dug into rocks and clambered up. Tevildo really hated his life right now. Everyone like him had fallen to a sudden and brutal sweep by the Urukhs Morgoth had taken from the fallen King of Mordor and reworked, strengthened, Everyone else was dead and all he could do was try to follow these Elves, to see if something else could...._

_Roaring, tectonic and both merging with the thunder and the thunder made into a voice echoed. Rocks were tossed and slammed as the giants continued their war amidst the storm, and by then the Elves were at the edge of a cave._

_"Is this it?"  
_

_"Maybe, 'Dan I don't know. Dreams aren't exactly a good guide to mountain terrain."_

_Elrohir made a sharp bark of laughter and then swore when he pricked his foot on something sharp._

_Elladan raised an eyebrow. "And where did you learn that word?"_

_"Deraeda Maglor, where do you think?" And he repeated the word more foully, as Elladan, the more curious, stooped down._

_"Well hel-lo, what have we here?"_

_They did not see that the creature they were looking for was seeking an outlet in the storm, fleeing something that had slept, in the deep recesses of the world, and awakened. A thing that they would encounter later as it had clawed its way out of the mountains and stormed around in wrath, but for then, it had 'merely' ransacked Goblin-Town and laid it waste and was slowly but inexorably clawing its way to the same cave, from whence it would flee._

_Both picked up blades, staring at them in rapt surprise._

_The bloated creature with its massive wattle-like hextuple chin stared at them scratching its head, as Elrohir said softly. "Orcrist." Elladan looked at the blade in his own hands. "Glamdring." Claws clacked at the edge and as they realized belatedly that the blades were gleaming with a brilliant blue hue, they heard a sound like the hissing of an enormous cat. The creature that was fumbling for a club-like weapon it held in a pouch grunted:_

_"Is that a cat?"_

_To their left they whirled as they saw a hulking thing near-shambling, pallid with the unlight of the underworld absent Dwarf-fires. It had something like a crown on its head and nuzzled its chin with one of the thick things it called paws._

_"What in the name of Morgoth are you supposed to be?"_

_Then its beady black eyes saw their blades._

_"Biter and Beater? How?"_

_It lunged for them then and they moved their blades with the kind of motions they'd learned by hard experience. The old forges of Gondolin, in the dawn-time, were the works of craftsmen who were the masters of the masters of the field. The Great Goblin, as they would have learned (and indeed in later times did learn after asking a simple question of Thranduil of Mirkwood, who growled the name approvingly) was a minor Maia, but incarnate flesh even of such creatures bled like all else. Elrohir had stabbed into the creature's throat and Elladan had hamstrung it twice._

_It rasped something like "Well that's it then" and then it slipped and hurled over, and they heard that same curious sound, like the hissing of a frightened enormous cat._

_Then they saw something climb up and try to take shelter with them. It was the strangest thing they'd ever seen, it had the dour and unhappy expression of a wet cat, wringing out clothes, and grumbling in a language surprisingly close to Westron. Had they known of Tevildo, Prince of Cats, there might have been a more hostile, pointed introduction. Instead they all took shelter in the night, waiting for the rain to stop. Behind the door they heard a booming sound like drums, drums in the deep._

_They were gone by the morning, the giants back in quiescent slumber, and they missed when the door that had been that realm's entrance burst open from the outside, and more burst with it, as something immense and dark with eyes that gleamed with an eldritch silvergreen light erupted outward, beating its chest and roaring with a primordial power, at last freed of the slumber since it had escaped the Hunter and his fearsome sword._

"Tevildo," mused Galadriel. 

"What is he supposed to be?" All three of the other Elves asked the question.

"One of a set of animals taken by the Dark Lords in the dawn-age, reworked and reshaped. He wanted to make them walk on their hind legs and speak like Elves and Men. They were already intelligent, their Fear no less so than Men or Elves." She shivered slightly. "It was a terrible thing he did to them. Of all his works it is one of the lesser evils, and they are accounted differently, I think, in the eyes of the Lords of the West. Melian said so, and I like to thinks he knew their counsel though I am not always sure she did."

A somber silence took hold, and then Celebrían sought to break it, after letting it be there for a moment with "What is the strangest thing you encountered on your adventures?"

"Oh that's easy."

_The twelfth year of their adventures saw them seeking shelter at night near a surprisingly bright fire._

_They had seen a string of broken bodies seized with raw animalistic strength, but their blades were dull. No Orcs. In fact, some of the bodies that were broken **were** Orcs. _

_"Well that's....encouraging," said Elrohir, his head cocked. The sight in question was that of a Warg, body cracked and he stared in fascination at the bones exposed beneath the fur._

_"What kind of creature would eat **that?** " _

_"Something desperate or something stupid."_

_There was movement in the darkness and three hulking things moved in. They were crudely marked clothes, oversized, and held horses on a stick._

_"Horse-meat, finally. We ain't had nothing but maggoty stinking bread for the last three days. Trolls. On bread. What about that is just, I ask you, what?"_

_"Oh come on, Bill."_

_"Bert, I really don't want to hear it. Not at all. Not now, not ever. This shadow in the North is taking our food. We have to go south."_

_"He's right, Bill."_

_"Tom, when I want your advice, I'll ask for it."_

_They froze. "Hmm....I smell flesh."_

_"Well no shit you smell flesh, you're holding the rest of that herd of horses in your paw. Good old horse stew."_

_"No. Not horse-flesh. Elves."_

_They froze._

_"Elves, you say?"  
_

_"Yes, perhaps drawn to our fire."_

_"Hmm.....I don't think so. They'd know a troll fire when they see one."_

_"So what are we going to do tonight? I know we're eating the horses but maybe we'll try to find that village?"_

_"Village? No, we need to leave. The food is getting thin around here."_

_"Food? Pfah. I'll take anything. This is crazy."_

_"What's crazy?"_

_"Some shadow rises in the north and this shadow has a bride, now?"_

_They all laughed._

_"Bride. Right. Morgoth, the mighty and the terrible, besotted with a maiden. The kind of tales a child would tell."_

_They laughed._

_The two stayed quiet, listening to the trolls talk. Then they dismissed the statements as the mere curiosity that three of the smartest, wisest of the lot had been there, and they quietly protracted the conversation to keep the trolls around the fire. Later, much later, they would realize the full meaning of this, that it was more than Morgothian hordes' barracks talk and crude and filthy rumors. They would experience a deep regret then, and the shadow of the past and present and future intruded on them all, and the story of the strangest thing faded into another silence._

Elladan sighed. "That was sad only in hindsight, knowing what we all know now. What Arwen survived. If we'dve understood that then...." 

Galadriel shrugged. "You had no way to know."

"True, Darnaeth, but it's easier to know that in the head than in the heart."

"True, and that is one of the most mature things I have ever heard you say."

They grimaced.

"What we saw would make anyone....wiser, if that is the case."

Elrohir nodded.

"Like Gollum."

"Gollum?" 

"Yes."

And there was a sadness in them as they told the tale of what they had encountered at the very start of their adventures.

_"Moon's risen. We need to stop, to go back to the shelter."_

_" 'Dan I'm telling you I heard something."_

_" 'Rohir, we're in the middle of a forest. At night. There are plenty of somethings to hear, even with the shadow."_

_"Not an animal. This is.....something else."_

_"Ppppprreeeccciiooussss" a word, a hiss, a whine._

_"Precious is losssstttttt."_

_They froze._

_"You're right. It is something else."_

_Something was crawling into the light of their fire._

_It was an old, weary, starved thing, crawling with a cracked leg, front hand bloodied. Its eyes had a fading green glow._

_"Nasty elvses, gollum. They sees us. Gollum."_

_Elladan knelt beside the creature._

_"Nothing deserves this fate."_

_If Gollum had been in better health he would have tried to fight the filthy Elvses, but he was not, and so he meekly let Elladan and Elrohir take him closer to the fire, turning his large green-gleaming eyes away from them._

_"Waarrmmmthhhh."_

_The creature's voice was like breathing and hissing._

_"Precious," it wailed. "Golden Precious."_

_The sons of Elrond froze._

_"What precious?"_

_"Ring. Golden Ring. Fell. Broke. Broke when Dark Lord came in from outsssiddeeee."_

_"Gollum, Gollum."_

_There was wheezing then._

_"What is this, brother?"_

_Elladan shrugged.  
_

_"I don't know."_

_"I don't know what he is."_

_"Not a Man or a Dwarf."_

_"No. I think he was something else, once."_

_They watched as the creature murmured in an incomprehensible dialect, one that felt old and like a being out of time and space._

_Then two words sunk in._

_"Golden Ring. Broken when the Dark Lord came in from-"_

_His eyes went wide._

_"The One. It survived."_

_Elladan nodded._

_"He must have found it, somewhere. After Sauron was....."_

_"Lost, precious lost. Deagol, forgive me. Ssssorrryyyyy."_

_"Deagol!"_

_The creature's motions were growing slower._

_"First time I've ever seen this," Elladan said, quietly, in the shadows, the fire casting gleams on them._

_"I know mortals die, we can die too, killed on a battlefield by blade or other weapons. But this?"_

_They nodded._

_"Nobody should die like this. Alone, somewhere in the woods." Elrohir's voice was pensive.  
_

_"And yet they do." Elladan's voice was weary._

_"They do. But here," and they nodded. "We'll stay here."_

_In the morning the broken old thing was still and it was cold, blood dried and the lights within its skeletal sepuchral eyes had gone out._

_They buried....Gollum, the only thing they could think to call him, in a grave, unmarked, and said a quiet prayer to Eru that the tormented soul of the......person, the halfling, almost, that they had encountered would find peace beyond the grave._

"That was one of the first things that happened to us, Nana. We make camp in the woods, we light a fire. And someone of....we still don't know what that Gollum was, or what kind of being he may have been." 

"A Pherianath. A Halfling. Once. That would be my guess. Mithrandir spoke of them so. Said they could display great resilience."

Galadriel nibbled at her nails.

"I suppose that the elder Lord would not welcome the younger to return with the One, because if he had....."

And there was silence.

Celebrían was much quieter, and for the first time regretted little of her time away from adventures, hidden in quiet and living in peace. 

"Then there was the one time we thought we'd.....found her."

_The ninth year of their searching, and they had ridden the furthest north they would ever go. Not near the outer edges of the realm where the Great Enemy's fell servants had carved out squalid empires of their own, but at a fringe of a fringe of a fringe. And there they had seen something strange. A figure moving in a blue dress with flowing black hair, who had peeked out from woods and stared in shock, and then sought to run._

_"That can't be...."_

_And here it was Elladan who followed the vision, impulsively. His emotions couldn't resist it. Even if it was a false hope._

_Shadows thickened around them and became redolent with the Fear, Elrohir drawing Orcrist. It glowed brilliantly._

_"Brother, stop!"_

_Then the Arwen they saw froze, and stood before them, and spread her arms to welcome them._

_At that sight, both froze. The face was perfectly akin to hers, but it was older than she was. Fitting, it had been nine years since her capture. Yet....woods. And she was barefoot. Her eyes were strange, they realized. Not her true color but dark, an obsidian hue from lid to lid that seemed to drink in darkness._

_"I'm right here," she spoke, but it was not her voice. It did not have her softer tones. It was harder. Colder. A soft element of cruelty, and now both of their blades were visible._

_"Come now, sons of Elrond, don't you recognize me?" Sardonic curves to the lip that were not hers, facial muscles tight and sharp._

_"Begone, foul spirit! You are not her!"_

_Laughter rippled from the conjuration, silky and menacing, and a shadow rose before them, clad in a dark cloak._

_"My master is dead, and I endure, last of my kind. Elrond was part of his fall, so I shall take his sons from him! Die now, sons of Elrond, and know that it was Khamûl who was the architect of your doom!"_

_The power within them blazed more brilliantly, and they moved, the blades of Elven-work clashing against the weakened Wraith, holding himself together by virtue of his shape and his iron will. Their power blazed, burning with a more brilliant hue that made the Ulairi raise his hand and snarl, and then both of the Gondolin blades, enhanced by the innate heritage of Melian, struck true._

_Silky laughter echoed and the Wraith died as he wished, in glory at the hands of blades. Not sunken into creating a crack in the Doors of Night from which the greater evil began to draw greater strength until he'd erupted in the world anew, and grew from strength to strength._

Celebrían shuddered. "You've seen so many things, my sons. I am proud of you." 

Both of them smiled, wryly.

"One last story. This was in our second journey by the Misty Mountains, when there were stories of much worse things out there than trolls or Great Goblins."

_It had come to the deep recesses of the world long, long ago. In ancient times and elder days when the Rider and his terrible blade stalked the night, killing and breaking the creations of the Lord of the Iron Hells. Once there were many like it. Now it was alone, and it was changed. Enhanced. It had been born in the time of the Lamps, and its kind had been fruitful and multiplied in the old realm of Arda, when the Elves had first awakened. They had stalked the night then under the starlight, and it had been from them that the Elves had first learned of terror and the destruction of the Old World. Then the Rider had come and all its kind were dead._

_It was a gigantic thing, neither beast nor man, shorter than the Mumakil, but one of the most terrifying creations Morgoth's marring had worked. It was a thing of obsidian-hued fur and a low forehead with a brow-ridge that projected outward, deeply. Eyes that shone with an eldritch light awoke, in the deep recesses. The things that lurked here had done this. They had dropped dust and rocks on its head. And it had risen to its feet and hit its chest, pounding it with booming sounds like the echoing element of drums, and then its mouth opened and there was a rolling howl that split the night._

_Goblin-Town had sent its first probes to test the creature, but it was of the creatures dark and old and strong, the hidden things of the First Age. Hands neither Man nor Elf nor Dwarf, with long fingers and a distinct kind of grip lanced out from the darkness and then hurled goblins against walls and the wet smacking of the bodies marked their death. Eyes shone in the night and that roar echoed further, as it tracked the path whereby its predecessors had come. It moved upward and Goblin-Town would encounter a gigantic thing that walked on two legs like the free peoples of Arda, but was no thing of sapience._

_It was alone and it knew it was alone, and it raged._

_In darkness glowing eyes lurked and hands grasped and Goblin-Town burned and cracked and became as Hell. Its master, the bloated toad-thing that had once been a minor Maia, had fled to encounter Elf-blades in the dark and in the rain. The creature had rampaged and then climbed up to the edge of the mountain. It had formed its hands into a knuckle-walking pattern and then it bashed them into the door, eventually breaking out, and then through, gutting a hole in the mountain as it did so._

_And then it had fled into woods where it stalked the darkness and slept by day, replacing the terror of three Trolls with something happy to slake itself on other creatures of Morgoth. From its presence, it created a brief-lived horror known to the servants of the Dark. The Woods of Blood._

_Radagast, guardian of the woods and servant of Yavanna Kementari entrusted with a mission of great delicacy, heard of the Woods of Blood, and learned of a great horror that lurked in its depth. He began to track its aftereffects, seeing trees smashed by its passing, colossal footprints left in the ground._

_In a long ago time when he had come to Arda unclad and walked among its wildness and its darkness he had seen the others like it, so he knew what he was seeking. Arda was dying, the time of Renewal was drawing near. His powers were greater than they had been and he knew this would be so with the rest of his order. If he could call upon greater measures of power, just what were the Blue Wizards far to the East doing?_

_\-------_

_" 'Rohir," Elladan's voice was taught, an undertone of fear making Elrohir pause._

_"What is it, brother?"_

_"What do you make of this?"_

_This was a big impression in the ground easily wide enough for them both to stand in it. It was long and it had deeper edges before it in a precise sequence. It was...._

_"I'm not sure. Some work of the enemy?"_

_"I.....I don't know."_

_They stepped back, further, and then rubbed their eyes, shaking their heads._

_For the first time, too, they realized that it had not been an illusion that the woods seemed lighter than usual. Trees were torn and smashed in the path of something that had moved, a gigantic force powerful enough that its tread had not merely torn the trees down but smashed through the trunks._

_The Sun was settng, Arien's light dimming._

_They were standing in a gigantic footprint, though at least firewood would be no trouble to gather here, and then there was a growl, low and rumbling. Neither speech nor roar, but something in between._

_Something moved, vast and hulking, a furry mountain that rose in the light of the setting Sun. Arien's blood-red hues were weaker in the Long Dark, but they cast a massive silhouette, something that towered over the trees. Its lower limbs were massive, the feet that had made the footprint before them, its upper body stout, arms long and trailing near to the knees. The face lacked a nose and had a deep set pair of eyes beneath a brow ridge. It had sharp scales that adorned parts of its body like a network of spikes or horns, four of which extended across from its face, two curving downward in a semicircular pattern, the two from the top of the head standing straight up._

_The face was a diagonal gash in its skull, the twin eyes gleaming with golden fire, the ivory bone-scales that protruded seemingly a kind of natural armor and something more besides._

_'And beasts became monsters of horn and ivory, and dyed the Earth with blood,' murmured Elladan, always the more attentive student to their father's lore._

_The diagonal-shaped mouth extended with vicious fangs, and then the booming roar echoed as it began to beat its chest, and that diagonal mouth formed a vicious grin that curved across its face like a half-moon as it strode toward them, a murderous intent on its face._

_They had brought bows with them though they tended to use them more for hunting. It was a matter of instinct that led them to draw the bows and fire a set of arrows that struck the beast, several of them striking near one of the bone-spurs in its right chest, one on its right cheek, one just beneath its left eye._

_The thing froze, glowering at them._

_"Well, uh...."_

_Then it roared again and its arms swept out and trees splintered and they dodged a hulking arm moving downward with surprising speed for so tall and massive a force, the knuckles leaving small craters in the ground and a shower of dirt and stone._

_"I think we made it mad!"_

_"You think? What other great observations do you have? The Moon is bright? "_

_Another roar and the knuckles of both hands slammed into the ground. They drew their blades of Gondolin, which gleamed in a fashion like and unlike Orc-gleam. They cut into the shins and calves but they were light cuts, flesh-wounds that did not bleed deeply and made the beast more enraged._

_It was a heady thing to face a creature out of the oldest legends of them all, but it was also dangerous. it reminded them of the duel of Fingolfin and Morgoth, but they knew how that had ended in the end. Fingolfin had stood without aid._

_When a brilliant light shone and a voice began to speak in echoing booming (painful to Quendi ears) Valarin, they froze. There stood a man clad in brown, wielding a staff, and incanting in a tongue of no known origin to Middle Earth. The booming sounds were matched by the way the gleaming light seemed to almost harden and to form a great beam that extended from the edge of the staff like a spear, the roaring creature lumbering into the path of the beam. It pierced clean through the beast, burning with the incantation of the work of Oromë, the kind of power that had slain monsters like this in the old days. He remembered the words as fresh as when first they had been spoken, the power erupting outward, and then in a low rumble, the power working its will, the creature shambled forward for a moment and then fell with a booming crash._

_"What was that thing?"_

_They saw for the first time another of the Istari, Radagast the Brown, and for a moment his might surged out of him undimmed._

_"Something old and foul that crawled out of the deep recesses of the world. I have been searching for this beast since it fled, last of its kindred, in the time of the War of Wrath."_

_His eyes shone as he looked at them, and he gave them a sympathetic smile._

_"Your search will not be in vain, sons of Elrond, but you will not find your sister in mountains or in what lurks beneath them. She will be found in woods, if she is found at all."_

_And in a sudden rush like the sound of wings Radagast was gone._

The moon's light shone, cleaner in the darkness as the Sun was in the light, when the stories were told. 

Celebrían yawned, as did the other Elves. It felt good to be under the stars all the same, for ever did the works of Elentari shine the most brightly to the Elves to whom she had given her great blessings. 

For a time they remained awake, gazing at the starlight, and felt the warmth of the love of the Lords of the West, and the awe of the works of Elbereth and of Sulimo, the Lord of the Seven Winds, Elder King of all Arda. Arda and Ea were dying, reality was coming to its end, an end of bloody things, of fell swords unleashed under starlight, but for now there was peace, and old tales and new tales interlocking, one last time of glory for the Eldar in story and in song.


End file.
